With a dawn of a new release on our hands, perhaps some passing of education / knowledge to someone whom may want to have a Install of Bea to try without all the cdrom activities.

First you start off by downloading the release, This can be found on official mirrors and it could take roughly around an hour or so to download depending on your connection to the Internet, After you download it, using your favorite burning program (NERO .. or CD Record) burn it onto a Disc, I like RW discs, because you can wipe it clean for a new release .. later down the road.

Basically at this point if you are looking to play with it, or install Bea, just put in the CD and boot your computer off the CD. I will assume you know how to do this.

Now if you are planning to install it along side windows, I will post another How To on this. I am documenting on How To install Bea, as a Full OS. Launch the installer, and follow the menu's by selecting the correct Language, Key board layout, and timezone ..

When you get to the Partition screen, this is where I would like to point out, my favorite partitioning scheme. At this screen, I urge you to try this..

At the Partition screen, Select the "Manual Partitioning"

You will see Gparted (a partition manager launch) you will see your disk, probably with one partition. If you did the smart thing you have backed up all your data. If you backed up all your data, at this point proceed.

I deleted my 1 BIG partition, and broke it into 3 separate partitions. I have used the following sizes to reflect my system settings.

Now the beauty of this setup is when you want to install another Linux distro, or install ubuntu, or Linux Mint, All you are required to do is remove HDA2 and re-create the partition, and format it, to install your OS clean.

To Dual boot with Windows.. Windows MUST be installed first. Grub (Linux' boot loader) will provide an option to Boot Windows... I will document how to tweak the Boot loader in another document.

With the partition HDA3, after you accept the "manual partition" scheme you will have a choice where you want the mount point, but also if you create the same account in Linix Mint (say " user ") your home folder is left .. Untouched on the /Home (hda3) partition,

I know you are getting confused, lol, But Try it a couple of times... Follow my directions ..

Install once -- creating this Partition structure (Backup all files)copy over 10 files that you know are your personal files (i use mp3)then do the install again, but NOT deleting the Home Partition, and create the same user on the machine, and tweaking the "Mount Points"

If you have already few partions then you get problem.
You can't pick one and use it. You must delete it first and make it again. You must go forward and back in the instal. to make this.
And you can't install grub were you like and you can not put it on floppy.
This is on all ubuntu dists.

It's a somewhat forgiveable mistake recent converts and ex-Windows users make, but this is definitely not the right way to do this!

Partitioning - UNIX style

Working fullt-time as UNIX + Linux support engineer for a really big company I shall be so arrogant and simply claim that I know what I am talking of.

Putting the entire operating system into one single partition is a big "No" ... It's a mistake ex-Windows users often make because they don't know it better. OK, we shall forgive them. But if you as administrator do this in a live environment with critical applications running on the machines you will get your head whacked off -- either by "friendly" colleagues such as myself or we will make sure the responsible manager will do it. Can you say BOFH?

Basically, if something goes wrong and you have everything in one single partition, repairing this will be very hard.

Having your stuff broken up into the various UNIX-style mount-points has vast advantages here, as any broken partition can be mounted individually and independently from the main " / " root partition.

How I partition my disks (work + private!)

Before exploring this we should take a look what mount-points a typical UNIX and/or Linux system has. And I will sort them here by read/write access likeliness - meaning: Those mount-points which will mostly be read are on the top, followed by mount-points which mostly will get written to:

/boot -- contains the boot loader and boot menu. Is mostly read at boot time, has only limited numbers of write accesses. Because of its importance this should be the first Linux partition on the disk.

/ -- contains all the other filesystems, plus important locations such as /etc, /sbin, /lib, and many other important places that cannot exist on separate partitions. Can have some limited write accesses (e.g. temporary files in /tmp) but for the most of the time only gets read accesses. Because of its importance for the boot process this partition should be right after the /boot partition (otherwise the heads of the disk have to move a lot, especially during the boot process ...)

/usr -- contains all the binaries and the X11 graphical interface (e.g. /usr/X11R6) and libraries that don't belong to the OS proper but rather to an application somewhere somehow (e.g. /usr/lib). Only gets bigger write accesses when applications get installed or someone compiles a kernel (the kernel sources are usually located in /usr/src/linux), other than that this mount-point mostly gets read from not written to. Because of its importance for the boot process and overall significance for the functioning of the system this partition should be right before or right after the " / " partition.

/opt -- some distributions use this for optional stuff, e.g. non-essential tools (from the system's point of view!) such as GoogleEarth and other things that are considered "nice to have" but not really "must have or the system won't work without it". This partition can be anywhere on the disk, but I personally prefer to place it before /var ...

/srv -- some distributions use this to run their WWW and/or FTP servers in there. Sometimes admins chose to create this mount-point as some sort of "sand box" in which they run their network services. Can have some fair amount of write accesses, especially if you have stuff running in there that produces logs.

/var -- used for variable data. Usually your system logs are in there (e.g. /var/log/* ), some distributions use it for the WWW pages that are being served (e.g. /var/www). Gets mostly written to, and then a lot!

/home -- where the users place all their stuff. Bookmarks, config files created by all the various applications and desktops, all one's personal files, and all the stuff you do all day ends up here. Gets read and written to like mad.

So ... given how certain mount-points get written to a lot and others don't, I'd order them the way as written above. Now let's assume you have a 100 GB disk you want to partition, and you will use your system for WWW (e.g. to host your personal homepage on it + a small forum?) and maybe for some FTP (e.g. to exchange files easily with other users?), here is the partitioning I would suggest:

/dev/hda1: /boot, 50 MB min., 150 MB max./dev/hda2: /, 2 GB min./dev/hda3: extended partition, up and until the end of the disk/dev/hda5: /usr, at least 5 GB/dev/hda6: /opt ... if you want it. 2 GB should be enough/dev/hda7: /srv ... if you really want it. At least 4 GB/dev/hda8: /var ... at least 2 GB./dev/hda10: /home ... at least 75-80 GB if we take a 100 GB disk as basis/dev/hda11: swap ... 2x the size of your RAM, but not more. If you have like 2 GB RAM, then 1x the size of your RAM should be enough.

Now, the beauty in this setup is that first of all it's properly partitioned and less likely to give you headaches, and the second aspect is that all the partitions with lots of read accesses are concentrated towards the beginning of the harddisk and thus can be read faster whereas the partitions which will get lots of write accesses and which are more likely to fragment a little are towards the end of the harddisk (towards the physical center as stated by someone else further down in this thread).

This is how it's supposed to be done.

Suggestions and flame messages welcome

EDIT: some factual errors about where harddisks begin or end corrected ... Thanks to all

Last edited by scorp123 on Sun Apr 22, 2007 6:34 am, edited 1 time in total.

No offense taken from your post scorp123 .. But you have assume if you get questions like "Is there an easy way to upgrade an OS or do a fresh install, without loosing data"

90% of people who install ubuntu, or even the varents are in fact newbies. In essence my guide did say, a How-to .. sort of. .. By no means am I Linux / Unix Admin, perhaps I am as the indusrty say, as a Linux newbie. But you have to throw caution to the wind, By default, ubuntu and most commercial linux distros install as a 2 partition deal, verus my 3 partition scheme, It should at least advise what setting your /home folder serperate from the / (root) partion can save headaches if you have in re-install.. Please I am sure you can agree that Ubuntu is NOT an "advanced" installer.. The options are there... but out-of-box it's not ...

9812713 wrote: "Is there an easy way to upgrade an OS or do a fresh install, without loosing data"

OK, let's talk about a simplified scheme where you indeed put all the OS into one single " / " root filesystem, e.g. you don't want to create separate /boot and /usr partitions, but you create a separate /home so you can keep your data. Let's also assume you want to have multiple distributions on the same harddisk, e.g. they will all share your /home partition (you could still use different user names if needed):

I'd then suggest to put your root filesystems to the front of the harddisk as the grub or lilo boot loaders might have troubles if you place them towards the end. Windows XP doesn't have this problem apparently, so I assume a Windows partition can be anywhere on the disk.

Also, let's again take a 100 GB disk as basis. So I'd partition like this:

With a partitioning scheme like this you could constantly format /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2 again and again and install any distribution you want to try.

Different than what you claimed in your first posting it is not necessary to completely delete the partitions! It's enough if you overwrite them during the installation.

9812713 wrote:Please I am sure you can agree that Ubuntu is NOT an "advanced" installer..

I don't agree. No installer can replace human intelligence ... at least not yet. Even in professional products such as HP-UX (that's the UNIX produced by Hewlett-Packard ...) or Red Hat Enterprise Server the installer will by default suggest very stupid things. In the end you the user have to make use of all the possibilities and decide what you want. No installer can do that for you.

You do either have to start from scratch, or.... go through the process of moving, shifting your data around, which I may add, is not 100% safe, as one wrong key stroke, can end in a deleted partition, this is why I suggested before you start to play around with (your curent structure) to Backup.. As a system admin yourself I guess you don't even resepect the thought that I suggested to back up all your data.

It seems that we are on the same page, the guide was merely a "starter" guide to partitioning.. Not a " Adminisrators Guide to Partitioning "

9812713 wrote:You do either have to start from scratch, or.... go through the process of moving, shifting your data around, which I may add, is not 100% safe...

True. But then again many people in the Windows world have applications such as PartitionMagic (and similar ones), and those are quite safe to use, even for the unexperienced user.

9812713 wrote: as one wrong key stroke, can end in a deleted partition, this is why I suggested before you start to play around with (your curent structure) to Backup..

I am getting your point, it's just that in my opinion if you really want to "educate" users and "pass on knowledge" (quotes from your posting) you should at least do it right and either tell users the whole story how partitioning is really supposed to be done or you should label your "How To" as being a simplified version for new Linux converts. But I think we pretty much achieved that now, all the postings combined here in this thread pretty much cover the topic plus it can't harm to have a little controversy about partitioning schemes. If nothing else it will at least motivate people to think about their partitioning schemes before they touch their harddisks ... or so I hope

9812713 wrote: As a system admin yourself I guess you don't even resepect the thought that I suggested to back up all your data.

Huh? Nope, in fact doing backups before touching your harddisk is very very wise. Better have a backup and never need it than being in need of restoring a backup but not have one

Here's my background - minimal Unix user experience back in the days of BSD on DEC MIPS boxes and more recent experience with Tru-64 Unix on a Alpha box, all used for software development. No Unix admin experience, but my admin experience on other platforms dates back to the days of RSTS on PDP-11s through VMS on VAXen and Alphas, and some Windows NT/XP admin experience.

On my home system, I've got a single 160GB drive with all but 71GB currently used in XP partitions. The 71GB is an XP extended partition. I have a bare-bones copy of XP installed in a 10GB partition within this extended partition that is dedicated for VPNing into work, leaving 61GB non-partitioned free space.

I would like to install Linux Mint from the Live CD in some of this 61GB free space. Because this free space is in a Windows extended partition, does this make it unavailable for use?

Will Grub have any problems with the fact that I already have two bootable Windows partitions on the drive?

If I can use this free space, should I take whatever default partitioning Mint will want to do with this space? If not, how should I partition the free space? One consideration is that I probably will want to experiment with writing some software with Mono in this Mint installation.

Having an extended partition already is not the problem. The problem comes in if the extended partition is formatted in a Windows-only file system such as NTFS. In that case, the XP partition will need to be shrunk ("resized" in partitioning lingo). Mint can then install to the free space left after the XP partition is shrunk.

Also, I don't think that GRUB will have a problem with two Windows primary partitions. After all, it is a bootloader program.

"And you can't install grub were you like and you can not put it on floppy.
This is on all ubuntu dists."

I will have to tell my system that it can't boot from a Ubuntu floppy, even though it does. Ubuntu has the best Grub as well. It picks up all the other distros and names them pretty well. Here are two quotes from the web:

"If you have a specific requirement not to install GRUB to the MBR, you need to install using the Alternate disc, which will allow you to specify the install location for GRUB."

"This website is about how to use the Ubuntu 'Dapper Drake' and 'Edgy Eft' Alternate' Install CDs. The 'Alternate' Install CD features the more traditional text based partitioner. The main advantage of using the 'Alternate' install CD is that more choices are available for people who want to control the installation more precisely to customize their install. For example, you can choose between GRUB and LILO bootloaders and also specify exactly where you want the the bootloader installed. You can install the IPL for the bootloader to MBR on your first hard disk or any other hard disk you specify, or to the bootsector of the partition, or to a floppy disk or anywhere. "

Hope I haven't repeated someone else's post or laboured the fact too long. But I love to have the floppy option for GRUB, and I duplicate the floppy if it's critcal.

techne wrote:Having an extended partition already is not the problem. The problem comes in if the extended partition is formatted in a Windows-only file system such as NTFS. In that case, the XP partition will need to be shrunk ("resized" in partitioning lingo). Mint can then install to the free space left after the XP partition is shrunk.

Also, I don't think that GRUB will have a problem with two Windows primary partitions. After all, it is a bootloader program.

Only the partition in use by one of my XP installs within the extended partition is formatted. The rest of the extended partition shows as "Free Space".

scorp123 wrote:Now, the beauty in this setup is that first of all it's properly partitioned and less likely to give you headaches, and the second aspect is that all the partitions with lots of read accesses are concentrated towards the beginning of the harddisk (towards the physical center where sectors are closer together and thus can be read faster!) whereas the partitions which will get lots of write accesses and which are more likely to fragment a little are towards the end of the harddisk.

Thanks for the post scorp123, it was very helpful! However, I think I've caught a technical error. Isn't the beginning of a hard disk on the outer edge, not the center?

I think this is because modern hard disks rotate at a constant speed, but have an increasing number of sectors per cylinder as you move from the inner to the outer zones. The fastest read rates occur at the outer edge.

Anyways, I've used scorp123's post to partition a drive for a small desktop/server running Ubuntu 6.10 with a 200GB drive (pretty much the system he designed his example for).

Primary (sda1) ext3 128MiB /boot/

Primary (sda2) ext3 4GiB /

Extended 182.18GiB (the rest of the drive)

Logical (sda5) ext3 8GiB /usr/

Logical (sda6) ext3 4GiB /var/

Logical (sda7) ext3 168.18GiB /home/

Logical (sda8) linux-swap 2GiB swap

Can anyone comment on this partition scheme? Does it seem reasonable?

I will soon be setting up a RAID5 array with three 200GB SATA disks (that should give me a total of 400GB of space to partition). Will I be able to use the same partition scheme as above, but with a larger /home/ partition?

mdd4696 wrote:Isn't the beginning of a hard disk on the outer edge, not the center? I think this is because modern hard disks rotate at a constant speed, but have an increasing number of sectors per cylinder as you move from the inner to the outer zones. The fastest read rates occur at the outer edge.

I heard it the other way round ... But that doesn't really matter, for as long as you really put stuff in the right order IMHO

mdd4696 wrote:Anyways, I've used scorp123's post to partition a drive for a small desktop/server running Ubuntu 6.10 with a 200GB drive (pretty much the system he designed his example for).

Primary (sda1) ext3 128MiB /boot/

Primary (sda2) ext3 4GiB /

Extended 182.18GiB (the rest of the drive)

Logical (sda5) ext3 8GiB /usr/

Logical (sda6) ext3 4GiB /var/

Logical (sda7) ext3 168.18GiB /home/

Logical (sda8) linux-swap 2GiB swap

Can anyone comment on this partition scheme? Does it seem reasonable?

Looks OK to me. ext3 is very reliable, even if you should ever suffer from an instant power failure chances are very good that you will get all your data back.

mdd4696 wrote: I will soon be setting up a RAID5 array with three 200GB SATA disks (that should give me a total of 400GB of space to partition). Will I be able to use the same partition scheme as above, but with a larger /home/ partition?

Hmmm .... just make sure your SATA controllers are really really supported. Google around if needed. Google a lot! Even in the professional area people make very bad choices and buy super-expensive "professional" equipment only to find out that this stuff doesn't run on Linux, or will only work with proprietary closed-source drivers which totally sucks as soon as you have to or want to upgrade your kernel: such drivers will usually stop to function, giving you a non-bootable or otherwise crippled system. Whatever device controller you want to use: make sure the Linux kernel supports it natively out of the box ... no experiments with closed-source drivers please, it will only disappoint you and give you sleepless nights.

As for partitioning ... this should be possible in my opinion.

But again, please Google around ... depending on what you want to do with your system RAID-5 may not be ideal ... e.g. RAID-5 sucks for write-intensive applications, e.g. databases or similar taks that constantly write chunks of data to the disk. For something like that RAID-0+1 or RAID-10 may be a better choice ... But I am not really a RAID specialist, you should talk to someone else.

BTW, what about physical security? Please really make sure nobody can just walk in and pull the plug "by accident" ... You wouldn't believe the stupid BS that happens to "professionals" when they stumble over cables or hit CTRL+ALT+DEL on the wrong keyboard ...

scorp123 wrote:So ... given how certain mount-points get written to a lot and others don't, I'd order them the way as written above. Now let's assume you have a 100 GB disk you want to partition, and you will use your system for WWW (e.g. to host your personal homepage on it + a small forum?) and maybe for some FTP (e.g. to exchange files easily with other users?), here is the partitioning I would suggest:

/dev/hda1: /boot, 50 MB min., 150 MB max./dev/hda2: /, 2 GB min./dev/hda3: extended partition, up and until the end of the disk/dev/hda5: /usr, at least 5 GB/dev/hda6: /opt ... if you want it. 2 GB should be enough/dev/hda7: /srv ... if you really want it. At least 4 GB/dev/hda8: /var ... at least 2 GB./dev/hda10: /home ... at least 75-80 GB if we take a 100 GB disk as basis/dev/hda11: swap ... 2x the size of your RAM, but not more. If you have like 2 GB RAM, then 1x the size of your RAM should be enough.

Now, the beauty in this setup is that first of all it's properly partitioned and less likely to give you headaches, and the second aspect is that all the partitions with lots of read accesses are concentrated towards the beginning of the harddisk (towards the physical center where sectors are closer together and thus can be read faster!) whereas the partitions which will get lots of write accesses and which are more likely to fragment a little are towards the end of the harddisk.

This is how it's supposed to be done.

Suggestions and flame messages welcome

Scorp,

If I want to use the above partitioning scheme, but I DON'T want any WWW or FTP, but will probably check out Mono for software development, how would you suggest I partition this hypothetical 100GB disk?

tooslow wrote:If I want to use the above partitioning scheme, but I DON'T want any WWW or FTP, but will probably check out Mono for software development, how would you suggest I partition this hypothetical 100GB disk?

mdd4696 wrote:Isn't the beginning of a hard disk on the outer edge, not the center? I think this is because modern hard disks rotate at a constant speed, but have an increasing number of sectors per cylinder as you move from the inner to the outer zones. The fastest read rates occur at the outer edge.

I heard it the other way round ... But that doesn't really matter, for as long as you really put stuff in the right order IMHO

mdd4696 wrote:Anyways, I've used scorp123's post to partition a drive for a small desktop/server running Ubuntu 6.10 with a 200GB drive (pretty much the system he designed his example for).

Primary (sda1) ext3 128MiB /boot/

Primary (sda2) ext3 4GiB /

Extended 182.18GiB (the rest of the drive)

Logical (sda5) ext3 8GiB /usr/

Logical (sda6) ext3 4GiB /var/

Logical (sda7) ext3 168.18GiB /home/

Logical (sda8) linux-swap 2GiB swap

Can anyone comment on this partition scheme? Does it seem reasonable?

Looks OK to me. ext3 is very reliable, even if you should ever suffer from an instant power failure chances are very good that you will get all your data back.

mdd4696 wrote: I will soon be setting up a RAID5 array with three 200GB SATA disks (that should give me a total of 400GB of space to partition). Will I be able to use the same partition scheme as above, but with a larger /home/ partition?

Hmmm .... just make sure your SATA controllers are really really supported. Google around if needed. Google a lot! Even in the professional area people make very bad choices and buy super-expensive "professional" equipment only to find out that this stuff doesn't run on Linux, or will only work with proprietary closed-source drivers which totally sucks as soon as you have to or want to upgrade your kernel: such drivers will usually stop to function, giving you a non-bootable or otherwise crippled system. Whatever device controller you want to use: make sure the Linux kernel supports it natively out of the box ... no experiments with closed-source drivers please, it will only disappoint you and give you sleepless nights.

As for partitioning ... this should be possible in my opinion.

But again, please Google around ... depending on what you want to do with your system RAID-5 may not be ideal ... e.g. RAID-5 sucks for write-intensive applications, e.g. databases or similar taks that constantly write chunks of data to the disk. For something like that RAID-0+1 or RAID-10 may be a better choice ... But I am not really a RAID specialist, you should talk to someone else.

BTW, what about physical security? Please really make sure nobody can just walk in and pull the plug "by accident" ... You wouldn't believe the stupid BS that happens to "professionals" when they stumble over cables or hit CTRL+ALT+DEL on the wrong keyboard ...

Regards,scorp123

It is necessary to put Boot? At me such was not when I put automatically linuh Mint

kenetics wrote:Some questions:Where is the boot assigned (kernel, start up) if there is no boot partition? also where does Grub reside?

Always in /boot ... If you don't have a separate /boot partition then /boot will most likely exist as sub-directory on your " / " root filesystem.

Yes, you can install more than one Linux distro on the same machine, but this needs a little bit of planning ahead. But usually a fresh Linux install should detect the presence of a previous Linux installation and then offer this as a boot option after it has installed its boot loader.

Of course, it's always better to have some sort of emergency boot disk or Live CD ready, just in case something goes wrong.

Thanks. One other question, will there be a /boot for each Linux OS and does Grub reside in the boot? These are questions that I can't seem to find clear explanations to on the internet. I'm almost ready to partition my drive, which is 120 GB.